When a user requests a web page or other content page via a browser, the user typically experiences a noticeable delay before the page is fully or even partially displayed. Various factors can contribute to this delay. These factors include, for example, (1) the speed of the wireless or wired connection between the user's device and the Internet, (2) the location of, and load on, the origin server that hosts the page, (3) the size of the page, including any embedded graphics, (4) whether, and the extent to which, the page includes embedded objects that need to be separately retrieved (possibly from different domains) once the page's HTML has been loaded, (5) the complexity of the page's coding, including any scripts, and (6) the processing power of the user's device. When the delay is significant (e.g., several seconds or more), the task of browsing can be frustrating for users.
One way of rendering web pages or other content pages via a browser is to use graphics commands. OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is a cross-language, multi-platform application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D and 3D vector graphics. The API is typically used to interact with a graphics processing unit (GPU), to achieve hardware-accelerated rendering. OpenGL can be used to draw primitives—points, line segments, or polygons—subject to several selectable modes. Primitives are specified, modes are set, and other graphics operations are described by issuing commands in the form of function calls. Some commands specify geometric objects to be drawn, and others control how the objects are handled during rendering. A system can make calls to OpenGL for commands to render a web page.